Rudy Giuliani and the Meaning of Love

What does it mean if someone "doesn't love" Rudolph Giuliani? Many New Yorkers have considered that question, or a stronger variation; there are a lot of passions in this city. The inquiry hasn't made us doubt ourselves. It shouldn't make President Obama feel bad, either—even though Giuliani, on Wednesday night, managed to conflate love for himself with all kinds of grander emotions. “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the President loves America,” Giuliani said at an event for Scott Walker, in Manhattan, according to Politico's Darren Samuelsohn. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me."

We know the weight of the "me" in there—with Giuliani, it is always, in the end, about Giuliani. He spent eight years as New York City's mayor, which is no time at all compared to the number of hours he has spent bragging about it. But who is this "you" whom Obama also doesn't love? Giuliani was speaking to, as Politico put it, "60 right-leaning business executives and conservative media types." The President was less loving than all of them, Giuliani said, because, "He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”

What faces did Giuliani see—or fail to see—at the event that made him so sure of that assessment? He talks as if he knows what the children of loving, patriotic parents look like. Obama was brought up by a single mother who, even when they lived abroad, played him recordings of the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., an act in which one really can see many kinds of love mixed together. He was also cared for by grandparents whose love of country Giuliani has no business impugning. These types of casual insults, so characteristic of Giuliani, remind us that he has no business pontificating about other people's affections. (He talks freely enough about his own.) But, leaving Obama’s heritage aside, is Giuliani really saying that someone without American parents, and without specific early instruction in a particular brand of patriotism, can't get his mind around this country's greatness? There are a lot of immigrants who have loved this country and died for it—that is the idea of America. Or was Giuliani just suggesting to the audience that there was something different about Obama? And what might that be?

Perhaps Scott Walker would be a good person to ask. He was, according to Politico, sitting quite close to Giuliani at the dinner. Walker also campaigned with Mitt Romney in Wisconsin, in 2012, on the same weekend that Romney said, “Our President doesn’t have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do.” Thursday, on CNBC, Walker said that he wouldn't comment on Giuliani's views or on "what the President thinks or not," saying that each man could speak for himself. Walker added, "I'll tell you, I love America." Pressed on whether he agreed with Giuliani, he said, "I'm in New York. I'm used to people saying things that are aggressive out there." Are they so shy in Wisconsin?

Republicans have made these insinuations, more or less constantly, since Obama appeared on the political scene, seemingly deaf to how he actually talks about America. After Bobby Jindal made similar comments, factcheck.org just last week looked into the "exceptionalism" question and wondered why it kept being repeated when the "claim that Obama 'won’t proudly proclaim American exceptionalism' is quickly and easily belied by a search through Obama’s public speeches." That question sounds like something from a character in a vaudeville sketch who, having forgotten some code-word, asks why everyone keeps saying it.

Politico spoke to Giuliani after the dinner, and reported that he "elaborated" by complaining that Obama "sees our weaknesses as footnotes to the great things we've done," which raises the question of where, if even footnotes are too presumptuous, the weaknesses should go in the book of America. Giuliani continued, "What country has left so many young men and women dead abroad to save other countries without taking land? This is not the colonial empire that somehow he has in his hand. I’ve never felt that from him. I felt that from [George] W. [Bush]. I felt that from [Bill] Clinton. I felt that from every American president, including ones I disagreed with, including [Jimmy] Carter. I don’t feel that from President Obama.” So this is, again, about how Giuliani has "felt" when he's been with Obama: as if he were talking to someone else’s colonial who was out of place in a position of power. Giuliani also weighed in on the Crusades—“I’m not sure how wrong the Crusades are. The Crusades were kind of an equal battle between two groups of barbarians"—a matter whose connection to American patriotism he left unclear.

John McCain had a fine moment in the 2008 campaign when he told a woman at a town-hall meeting who said that she was scared of Obama because he was "an Arab" that Obama wasn't, and that she didn't have to worry. But that was a moment of basic decency, not some grand act of bravery. Trying out rhetoric of the Giuliani kind may be a temptation for the candidates in 2016. They won't be running against Obama, but they also won't have to look him in the face. His Americanism will be an idea that the G.O.P. can accept as a given or use to discredit itself.

As it happened, Obama gave a speech on Wednesday, too, at a White House summit on combating violent extremism. In it, he talked about "the ideals that have shaped us for more than two centuries" and said, "The story extremists and terrorists don’t want the world to know—Muslims succeeding and thriving in America. Because when that truth is known, it exposes their propaganda as the lie that it is. It’s also a story that every American must never forget, because it reminds us all that hatred and bigotry and prejudice have no place in our country. It’s not just counterproductive; it doesn’t just aid terrorists; it’s wrong. It’s contrary to who we are." He also talked about a card he'd received from an eleven-year-old girl named Sabrina, who is Muslim. She wrote on it, "I enjoy being American." It was a Valentine's Day card, in the shape of a heart.

Amy Davidson Sorkin, a New Yorker staff writer, is a regular contributor to Comment for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.